[Music] hi Shannon Waller here and welcome to the inside strategic coach podcast with Dan Sullivan today we're continuing our special episode on the last 30 years and Dan today I'm actually going to ask you about the next 30 Years which is really exciting so I'd love to know how do you see yourself and how do you see strategic coach over the next 25 30 years yes well you know our past is our future because what we've really Gotten Good at doing since 1989 has much more power and potential now than it did when we first started and I'll make an overall statement about that is that I think the number one industry in the world in the 21st century is going to be coaching coaching of every possible different kind and every industries that now exist industries that don't exist yet and what I mean by that is that because we're now in a basically networked economy worldwide that doesn't mean there aren't still all sorts of other aspects to the economy but the main enabler for everything in the global economy now is communication networks in which creative people can create new things and they themselves have the ability if they're properly focused and they feel confident and they feel properly supported they can create amazingly bigger and better results in the years ahead than has been possible in the past you know it's not unusual now I think that there was a story of Kylie Jenner who's I think just turning 20 21 something like that and she's a billionaire and she comes from the Jenner Kardashian family but she went out on her own at like 16 years old and she has created a worldwide company and she doesn't have a very very big staff I mean she's got maybe a dozen or so actual staff and then she's got collaborations with every other thing that she needs in the perfume business the fashion industry she was not possible 30 years ago the business that she has was not possible and you have people who have four or five team members now actual you know full-time team members who are Global businesses well that's going to extend itself but the whole question is you can't manage an entrepreneur like that because they actually own the company but how do you keep them focused how do they keep themselves focused well they need a coach and so my feeling is more and more in every area of Entrepreneurship every area of new economic activity that has enormous growth prospects every person who is in a position to create a new Enterprise needs a framework needs a structure needs a process for establishing both long range progress but short range progress and then having someone that they can bounce their thinking off of and that would be a coach and they come in all shapes and forms okay as a matter of fact I tell all the Strategic coach clients that we're coaching now I coach about 500 right now I see them every quarter and I said you know doesn't matter what your product is doesn't matter what your service is doesn't matter where you're doing it doesn't matter what the overall industry looks like you should see yourself as a coach and what I mean by a coach is that you have identified exactly who you want to be a hero to because that's where your passion that's where your best abilities will come out for other people to utilize and then to be be appreciated and to be rewarded for that but then allow them to get a handle on who the bigger and better person is and the bigger and better Enterprise that they want to be running down the road and just have a long range structure we have a 25e structure and I said my goal for you is that you will see us a hundred times over the next 25 years and every quarter that you come back you will have progress to talk about that'll put you in a position to have an even better next quarter and that's all you have to think about is 25 years you've got 100 quarters and that's the model for us for the next 30 Years I don't see it changing at all Dan let's talk for a moment about your own 25e framework because very recently you just turned 75 and you laid out at your own 25 year plan at age 70 mhm and then you're mentioning today that you have recalibrated that yes I did I got to 75 and some of the cake is still in the freezer you know and it will not be wasted and so I said yeah this is kind of neat you've done three quarters of a century and now the next quarter you can really really accelerate your progress and I'm in great shape you know and bab's my partner and first of all I have to put out that none of this would have been possible without bab Smith this is my partner that I met and 1982 everything that happens by way of teamwork and strategic coach starts with the teamwork with Babs and me and the thing that I'd like to say about this is that this lifetime relationship and we're completely in sync with each other I remember someone said that you know you and Babs have been together we met in 1982 we've been together since 1983 and someone asked me a question question at dinner one night and they said what were the tough periods like in your relationship and I said tough periods tough periods let me think about the oh yeah there was that day when we were deciding where pictures should be on the wall and I thought it should be over here and she thought it should be over there and about 5 minutes into it it was kind of uncomfortable for about 5 minutes I say no she's right the picture should be over there and and I can't think I mean I've got the most seamless teamwork with Babs and for a lot of people who don't know the inside of strategic coach you should think of strategic coach has kind of a live theater where they put on live performances and Babs runs the theater everything related to the theater the business of the theater and I'm responsible for what's on stage I'm responsible for the new plays and you know the new scripts and that's it that's our teamwork this will be true we're both committed to the next 25 years together we have close to 70 team members who have been with us for more than 10 years I think we're pushing 20 who've been with us for more than 20 years you yourself are pushing 30 years in the program so my feeling is that first of all we've gotten better at finding who becomes a really good team member at strategic oach and they have to be committed to their unique ability and they have to also be committed to taking their unique ability and linking it up with other people's unique ability to create unique ability teamwork which becomes actually a self-managing company after a while so that will remain constant over the next 30 Years there'll be no change in that so that would be my notion and every quarter I get better at doing three things so I see over the next 100 quarters every quar I'm going to get better at being a coach M which I will always do you know with hundreds of really talented successful ambitious entrepreneurs and they're getting more ambitious that's a big change you know we're encountering people whose Vision keeps getting bigger and bigger the second thing is that I'm really good at creating new Thinking Tools and this all comes out of conversations in the workshops I now do with a certain level of the program I do Zoom calls this is the game changer program so I have seven Zoom calls with anywhere from 5 to 10 of our game changer clients just came off of one this morning and the third thing is that I'm really good at certain marketing activities like the podcast that we're doing right here and this is a very popular podcast we're in the top 5% of all podcasts in the world and there's three more of them that have crossed into the top 5% of podcasts in the world and I write a book a quarter so over the next 30 Years I plan to write a book every quarter these are little books that can be read in an hour but they also have an audio component and a video component and a thinking exercise component to them we do webinars and periodically I do live introductions and that's it I think the books are going to go from the small version that we create to Major Market books and I have a collaborator that we're starting with that the audio packages that we create the world is becoming more and more of an audio world over the next 30 Years so with one exception all my podcast or partner podcast you know I'm in a conversation as I am here and ours is one of the top podcasts in the world right now so I see that just extending outward and there's going to be more humans born there's going to be more humans who want to become entrepreneurs and I think the most ambitious and talented successful entrepreneurs who hear about us they really like what it is that we're suggesting for how they can grow a bigger and better future I love that and first of all thank you to all the listeners who've made us so successful and put us in the top 5% because it does not happen without you one of the point Dan in terms of the future that you've talked about which I find sort of fascinating is that you talk about growing 10 times and even 100 times and you think it's going to be way easier than the growth you've had so far oh yeah talk about that I was born two weeks before D-Day in 1944 you know the invasion of Normandy one of the crucial turning points of the second world war grew up in the 1940s on a farm in Northern Ohio and our farm had only had electricity for 16 years when we moved move there so it was a different world back then I grew up on radio I didn't see television till I was about 10 years old so the world has changed in a lot of ways flying cross country is now like taking a bus you know I mean that's how I think of it and about as comfortable as taking a bus across it's got the benefit of shortness but the Comfort level sometimes is not all that great lost the glamour Dan you know and things don't become pervasive until they're irritating I have to tell you in the world of technology it's not until we're really complaining about them that they're really widespread you know and lots of jokes about that these days how impatient people are that you know they turn their cell phone on and you know come on come on come on come on you know you know this is more communication that you have in your hand than the world had in 1950 you know so this is really interesting but the pleasure and the passion I have is who I'm working with so I know there's going to be Technologies we can't even dream about right now they're going to be ordinary in a way that when we first started in 1989 there was no internet there was no mobile Communications none of the things that we take for granted today and I I expect that to continue you know but I think that the entrepreneurs will be the same in terms of their desire for greater freedom freedom of time freedom of money freedom of relationship freedom of purpose that will stay constant and if I went back 2,000 years to the marketplace in Rome and could understand the language that they were talking their things they were excited about were the same back then things that they were bothered by are the same I think entrepreneurism is universal I do think that more and more entrepreneurism is moving to the center of everything where before it was on the outside that's a huge change I should say that that's change I expect entrepreneurism to be even more Central to human Affairs as we go forward then we get to be more more Central too yeah well and I love reflecting back to Roman times you know you were saying before we got in the studio they just can't find any good people or taxes I mean you can go into the future to the Star Wars cafe you know picture you know where what are they talking about M cash flow Regular ations taxes you know that's what entrepreneurs talk about big opportunities great new products great new Services I think it's pretty constant over not just over decades not just over centuries but really it's Universal and it's Timeless and moving into the future I just really love the idea that growing actually gets easier not harder because of the level of your capability the people I think not growing gets harder oh yeah I think the penalties for not growing are more psychologically and emotionally challenging today and financially CU you can see around you people who are really succeeding and I think that you know it's not just people in your own industry you're watching now you're watching people in hundreds of different Industries if you're comparing yourself to other people then you're really dooming yourself to a very unhappy future so one of the great thinking Transformations that happens in strategic coach is we get you to who you used to be and we only compare backwards to your own performance and then you project forward an improvement on where you are right now and these are the only comparisons that you should really do as an entrepreneur don't compare yourself to other people you have no basis for actually measuring accurately when you compare yourself to other people very true well Dan I Love Actually reflecting on our past 30 years and then putting teamwork with Babs you know will be exactly the same 25 years from now 30 years from now as it is right now and expanded and expanded our teamwork gets better and better fantastic Dan thank you so much for sharing your vision thank you very much at strategic coach we focus on growth in every area of your business and life leading to Freedom that entrepreneurs dream of join Dan Sullivan founder of strategic coach for a brand new OnDemand web Pres presentation it's a breakthrough hour of wisdom insight and proven strategies over 18,000 entrepreneurs can't be wrong watch today at Dan webinar.com [Music]